The Giver
The whole utopia project is based on the idea of living in a perfect world. For us to understand this concept, as a class we read the book “The Giver” by Lois Lowry. The book was about a boy living in what he thought was a perfect world.
As I continued the book Jonas began to discover the real truth behind the community, he was living in. It gave him a new view of what Utopia meant. This book gave me an understanding of how someone can perceive a world to be perfect when there is never a perfect world. I enjoyed this book so much and it gave me new ideas of freedom. I learnt that to be knowing the truth is more important than safety. I learnt how to identify different factors that we could use to make what we thought was “close” to a perfect world. These factors are Liveability factors.
Liveability Factors
Learning about the liveability factors was probably one of my least favourite parts of the project. One of the things we learnt was the different types of factors like subjective and objective factors.
Understanding liveability-learning about the liveability factors was probably one of my least favourite parts of the project. One of the things we learnt was the different types of factors like subjective and objective factors. Learning about the liveability factors was important because when we were designing a new place for the public, we need to make sure that we were considering things like climate, safety & stability and access to health care and education. Knowing about liveability meant that we could make a good decision in our redesign.
Introduction To The Project
Learning about the project was interesting as I learnt the purpose of our HASS and English lessons. When we were introduced to this project, I learnt so much about the process of designing a utopia and all of the small steps it takes to get to the end product you want. It was called Project Utopia.
Learning The Back Story
One of the most personal parts of this project was learning the reasons why we were designing our utopia. Then we were introduced to the main question……How can we redesign Fremantle port to make it a place where all people thrive? This is one of the most exciting parts of the process because this is very personal to me.
I live very close to Fremantle and going to Fremantle is one of my favourite’s things. Although I already knew a fair bit about Fremantle it was very interesting to learn what is the future of Fremantle. I had the chance to be a part of something so important for the future of Perth. I knew that this was a huge opportunity, but I also knew t would take a lot of effort.
Including The Global Goals
Going into the future we need to keep in mind the United Nations global goals. Being sustainable is extremely important for our designs. I want to be living in a future of a healthy city. To help me understand how much we need to incorporate the global goals we spend a couple of lessons deeply understanding each of the global goals. I learnt many new things about the goals. One is how important it is for cities to upgrade and meet the new future standards of infrastructure.
Our Ideas & Brainstorms
We were assigned to groups of 4 in our class as we would be working on this project during HASS and English periods. My group consisted of Isabella, Regan, Michael, and me. Then we started to brainstorm. This was probably one of the most time-consuming parts of the process. This is because I sometimes struggled to think of new and creative ideas.
This tested my effective communication because I needed to be communicating in a way that included everyone’s ideas. We had many weird and wonderful ideas. For example, we wanted to design a floating restaurant or a water park! Planning gave us time to fully explore every small idea we had.
Our Focus
We had a choice of what area we wanted to focus on. Here were the options:
- movement around the community (alternative to cars)
- the use of AI technology (robots)
- incorporate the history of the Port
- consider the traditional owners of the land
- create a resilient city to future pandemics such as COVID
final focus:
- movement around the community (alternative to cars)
- create a resilient city to future pandemics such as COVID
Our Idea
Our focus was to design a residential area that can survive through future pandemics. The main idea for our whole project is to include several different compounds. Each of these compounds has enough resources to survive a lockdown in future pandemics.
Each compound includes houses, workplaces, a shopping centre, outdoor recreation, and an indigenous playground for children. To transport people around our residential area we decided on introducing electric buggies in our design.
Area Focus
I think the reason why we chose these 2 things is to focus on ways that we have learnt so much from living in a pandemic ourselves. Once we landed on our redesign idea, we chose an area of the port we wanted to focus on. We chose the north side closest to the coast. We decided on this because we wanted our compound houses to have an extraordinary view.
Oral Presentation Skills
When my group and I presented our idea I learnt many new skills. Effective communication and problem solving when presenting to a crowd. I learnt how to continue someone’s sentence if they forget what they are saying. This happened a couple of times and learning to listen and understand each other was a very important skill. Another skill was to be able to answer a strange question. Some parents ask some puzzling questions. So even if we didn’t completely understand the question, we had to try our best to answer it. Overall I think my group improved over time in our oral presenting skills.
Final Vision Board
It took a long time before we got to the stage of creating the vision board. But when we did it was a lot of fun. This was the time when we had to decide on the layout of the board. It took many tries, but I think it turned out good. I think this was the part when my group did the best because we are quite organized.
Showcase Day
All of term 3’s work had led up to this hour. Many parents came and I think they enjoyed it. Lots of people came to our vision boards and some interesting questions were asked. Also, some special guests came. These gests were a very important part of our vision bored as they came to get some ideas for themselves.
Collaboration Overview
I think that my group was collaborating very well. I think that the workload could have been distributed a little more evenly, but we all had some sort of input into our main idea. I liked how we were open to many options and didn’t dwell on arguments.
I learnt new things about each of my group members. I think we could improve by having more of our group participate during the process. I felt like there were some people in our group that were being carried more than others. Overall, I was happy because there was little arguing and lots of work done and fast.
Conclusion
Throughout term 3 I learnt many new and interesting things. I learnt how important it is to be sustainable when thinking of the future of a city. I also learnt small facts along the way such as Fremantle port being moved in about 10 years. This project was a lot of work, but I think that it was very interesting to be a part of our future. I am so lucky to be in a school that could take part in creating ideas to improve our future.